Cossack regiment

The Cossack regiment is the Red cavalry force summoned to contain the mutinous 212th Infantry. Its arrival makes the threat of armed suppression visible: mounted troops encircle the rebels and draw their swords. Yet the confrontation reverses when the Cossacks themselves take offense at Commissar Gints’s speech, dismount, and fraternize with the infantry. The regiment’s brief appearance shows that military force in the revolutionary crisis cannot be treated as a reliable instrument of command; the soldiers’ judgment and fellow-feeling undo the operation from within.

Role and Intended Mission

The regiment is stationed a short distance down the railway and is described by the local commandant as Red and loyal. With the 212th in revolt, the commandant proposes calling it out to surround the rebels and disarm them without delay. Commissar Gints objects that using Cossacks would revive prerevolutionary methods, but he does not cancel the order. Instead, he says he will go to the rebels’ fortified camp and judge the situation himself, insisting that even deserters remain part of the people and must be approached through an understanding of their psychology.

Galiullin tries to dissuade Gints from this plan. He knows the reckless men of the 212th from his own division at the front and recognizes the danger in sending the commissar among them. Gints refuses to listen. The regiment’s role consequently begins as an armed precaution intended to make the rebels submit, while the proposed visit places the political authority directing the operation directly within reach of the force it means to control.

The Encirclement

At the word of command, the Cossacks mount and gallop to the clearing. There they surround the men of the 212th. The setting amplifies the imbalance: in the woods, mounted men seem taller and more formidable than they do in the open, and their horses impress the infantry even though the rebels have rifles in their huts. The Cossacks draw their swords, making the threat of force immediate. Gints then mounts a pile of timber inside the ring and addresses the surrounded soldiers.

The regiment’s demonstration of authority does not settle the confrontation. The infantry answer Gints with an uproar, accusing him of treating them as traitors and invoking the officers and Cossacks as agents of the old order. Their anger frames the encounter not simply as a dispute over discipline, but as a test of whether revolutionary soldiers will accept a hierarchy that still speaks to them with contempt.

The Reversal

Gints’s speech alienates the Cossacks as well as the rebels. They mutter that he regards everyone as swine and thinks himself lord and master. Their response becomes action gradually: first a few sheathe their swords, then more follow; one after another they dismount. When most are off their horses, they move in a disorderly crowd toward the center of the clearing and mingle with the men of the 212th, fraternizing instead of enforcing the encirclement.

This change of allegiance is the decisive turn in the regiment’s episode. The force called to impose order dissolves the division between armed suppressors and mutineers. The commandant’s plan has not been defeated by a counterattack; it is frustrated by the soldiers’ refusal to sustain the coercive posture once they hear Gints speak. The clearing that had been ringed by horses becomes a place of contact between the two groups.

Gints’s Departure and the Regiment’s Significance

After the Cossacks turn toward fraternization, their officers warn Gints to disappear quietly. They tell him that his car is at the station and will be sent to meet him. He goes, but pride prevents him from stealing away: he turns openly toward the station and forces himself to walk calmly despite his agitation. Near the tracks, at the edge of the woods, he looks back and sees soldiers with rifles following him; he quickens his pace.

The officers’ warning and Gints’s exposed walk show that the regiment’s change of course has left the commissar vulnerable, even as the scene does not establish what ultimately happens to him. For the regiment, the episode is a compact image of the crisis of command: it is called loyal and sent to restore discipline, but its soldiers respond to the rhetoric used against the rebels as if it were directed against themselves. Their dismounting and fraternization make solidarity, rather than the order to surround, the encounter’s lasting action.